Having spent far too much time reading about merits lately I've noticed a tendency towards suggesting changes that would benefit the person suggesting them rather than benefit the forum overall.

[...]

Your suggestion is rather to change the ranking system to mark out exceptional posters (like yourself).

Your implication as to me was not entirely clear; I think you were disclaiming that your words were not self-serving as to yourself, and I don’t wish to cherry-pick a few parts of what you said to turn it backwards. Nevertheless, for clarity: I should like to emphasize that my suggestion in OP is strongly against my own interests. Or at least, it is what most people would consider to be against my interests.

I was indeed disclaiming self-interest as I'm certain many seeing that I'm approaching 500 merit to rank up to Hero would accuse me of that. The second part of that was to point out you are rather an exceptional case and I don't think we need rank to tell us that.

As of now, I could kick back, make one marginal post (barely above the moderators’ deletion threshold) every two weeks, and still be called a “Hero” starting on 12 March 2019. Also, I am almost two-thirds of the way to Legendary, insofar as merit is concerned. Yet I am advocating that I should be required to continue working hard here.

That's a slightly odd way to look at it, but why not? If you've already done what is required to earn the badge then you deserve it even if you do choose to put your feet up on a tropical beach and sip cocktails from now on.

That said, I have sufficient pride that I don’t consider a greater challenge to be against my interests. To the contrary: As I said in OP, I want for earning Hero rank (and higher) to be something to be proud of. That means it must be difficult to achieve.

Perspective check: If the first person below Hero rank to ever reach the Hero rank merit threshold says that the threshold is too low, then I should hope that others would consider that opinion.

This is where our perspectives part. I don't see rank on a forum as anything to be proud about. What this is all about is shutting out the influx of spammers. Signatures were tied to rank a very long time ago and this is dealing with the consequence of that. The balance theymos has put in place looks to be effective in stopping shitposters gaining access to valuable signatures and not holding back anyone who is here to learn and participate. I don't feel that there would be any benefit to upping the requirements beyond giving you the challenge you yearn.

I agree with the Jr. Member and Members rank requirements this will help to reduce this farmers in making account until Jr. Member rank just to join signature campaign, Im sure that our community will be full of this ranks after not getting merits because of their shitposting just to fill the requirements of signature campaign.

On the other side I strongly disagree with that hero-legend merit requirement though I know I cant make it anymore to get at least on hero rank (losing hope) because of merit is not that too easy to earn for us like you, but I think that is too much requirements for other that is near to this ranks.

If the purpose of this suggestion is to make an achievement to yourself maybe all of those hero-legendary member will decrease their rank to prove their selves, and i think many high rank members will cry for sure especially those high rank shitposters and farmers.

Overall: Jet Cash, I know that you’re upset over how close you were to the Legendary activity range when the merit system was introduced. But that is no reason to both mischaracterize my posting and merit histories, and blame me for your “wobbly” computer being unable to handle texts longer than a Tweet. If you dislike my suggestion for any reason other than that it would place you about 2300 merits away from Legendary rank, I suggest that you argue on its merits (so to speak) rather than posting pointless ad hominem drivel. HTH.

I will reply to you, and I've only included a partial quote, but there are references elsewhere.

You will have seen from many of my posts that I point out that there no benefit to me in being a Legendary rather than a Hero, but it seems the same is not true for you.

Of course I don't blame you for my computer problem, and I suspect that it needs a bit of dust removal. I mentioned it, because it was during a fast scroll to pass over your monologue that it failed, and it affected my mood.

I think your suggestion is rubbish because it fails to consider the motivation of posters at the various member levels. Obviously this is of no direct concern to me as a Hero, but it is important to me as a supporter of the restoration of the great forum that Bitcoin Talk was a few years ago,

I am a speed reader, and as such the first thing I do is to look at the picture of the post. If it appears to be overly verbose, and far too detailed for the introduction of a concept, then I skip over it, especially if the topic appears to be a variant of one that has appeared numerous times before.

My reference to your merit awards referred to the award for the OP in this thread, and the point that I made was that the awarder appeared to have the same posting style and verbosity as you, and the awarding of the point would appear to be counter-productive. I am sure others have looking into your merit history, and your admitted alts, so I assume there is nothing untoward there.

At the moment you appear to be the Sun God on this forum, but please remember that Huitzilopochtli required human sacrifice on a regular basis. Please encourage newer members and don't belittle them for their efforts to satisfy your own self-aggrandisement ( yes, I am English, so I use the correct spelling). If I misread your claim to the simplicity in acquiring merits, then I apologise, but it did come over as rather self-promoting.

This is not to brag about myself. There is already a thread which somebody else started to do that for me; and anyway, the number below my name speaks for me, in and of myself. Rather, I am offering an object demonstration in support of my suggestion that merit requirements for the highest ranks are far too easy.

I have a question to you: Do you know more people with approximate results as your own? (i mean newbies, not theymos or Lauda ) If you don't know such people (only in that case), that only means that you are exception. In that case all your idea don't have any sense. Because your speach sounds like the speech of sportsmen who want people to do 200 kg chest press just because he can.

At first to do something we must know that amount of merit is not enough. Not just for one or two or three persons. And why just 1500 for hero? I think 7000 for hero and 70 000 for legendary will be nice. In that case you will be really proud of your rank

In fact, it's sounds like "I achieved so much, it's to easy for me. So change please it for all"

But i will agree with advanced number of merit for Jr.member and member

Don’t simply be proud of these titles: Make them signify an achievement to be proud of!

What the fuck is with these fucking people... Dude its a fucking web forum. The rank achieved here is nothing to be proud of...

Potato.

Well then I will be sure to let my colleagues know they are working with a true Hero. Wonder if I will get a parade? It is kinda Heroic being able to log into here long enough to obtain the rank, just imagine the tales I can regal about the heroic deeds I've accomplished. Surely I'll be lavished with gold and gems and admired by many!

Having spent far too much time reading about merits lately I've noticed a tendency towards suggesting changes that would benefit the person suggesting them rather than benefit the forum overall. Now I'm going to have to try very hard not to argue against change for self interest. If the merit system hadn't been introduced I would automatically have become a Hero tomorrow, but that doesn't bother me at all. Whether anyone believes me or not, I really don't care what my rank is.

The reason I disagree is that I believe the intention of the system is to block the spammers from ranking up and not to cause an obstacle to anyone using the forum as intended. The average of 1 merit a day requirement to keep within the existing activity based schedule seems well chosen to achieve that goal. Now that the initial distribution of sMerit has dried up it has become impossible for shitposters to ever achieve Hero or above (Sr. is probably also beyond their grasp). Anyone who is here for the right reasons should easily outstrip the 1/day requirement and not be affected by it at all.

Your suggestion is rather to change the ranking system to mark out exceptional posters (like yourself). Now that is not a bad objective per se, but not what Merit was meant to be the solution to. It is actually very easy to spot the exceptional posters simply by looking at the actual number of merit they have been awarded. I know this has already been suggested elsewhere but I'd go along with the introduction of a new beyond Legendary rank. That would indeed mark out the exceptional members and also give the existing Legendaries something to aim for.

I totally agree, everyone including OP is following their own interests and not solving the forum's issues like spam, shit posting etc.

The majority of people here use this forum to gain knowledge about the crypto world and make money from either trading or mining or why not, both. Once you get to Full Member or Sr. Member status and you can use all the features of this forum like adding an avatar, linking the signature etc. you should be all set and you shouldn't care about gaining merit or activity anymore.

What everyone should be actively concerned with is helping the community with whatever they can. It's always nice to have someone to ask advice from so, why not help out others when you can? Sadly, I have seen a lot of shit posting rather than help...

I was just reading this thread... and I was wondering if what you're saying is true? Can someone really get 1 merit per day easily? It seems like a rather difficult goal.

I've perviewed many threads on here and rarely do I see the green italics above a post denoting someone was merited.

Don't believe a word about it... Merit is hard to get if you're a person who doesn't have a lot of time to invests in creating posts. Even if you help out people (which is the purpose of a community) you won't necessarily get merits because usually people asking questions don't have merits to send or don't know how to use them.

OP may be a good poster with a loooot of free time on his hands but he is also a notorious merit "hunter". If you do not hunt for merit you won't get it as easy as it is advertised by some people.

What the fuck is with these fucking people... Dude its a fucking web forum. The rank achieved here is nothing to be proud of...

Holy shit people get a fucking life that isn't tied to this fucking forum... Go outside take a walk enjoy nature, get a fucking blowy (from a real person not some 15 yr old boy pretending to be a 19 yr old women on the webz), smoke a dube, have a glass of wine.

A persons trust, merit, and rank are completely inconsequential because interwebz and also have zero bearing on the content of their posts.

Yes, you are spot on! Keep in mind that this forum is also very popular between teenagers (and that's perfectly fine) since they have a lot of time on their hands and for some, no social life.

But the truth is people are focusing more on ranks rather than acquiring knowledge about the crypto world and then making money from it. The sad truth is everyone is trying to rank up to join signature campaigns and make money from it...

Just because you got the merits rapidly doesn't mean that we should declare the standard of average merits to +1 per day. If we had so many talented people around us then im sure that we would create a world full of Einstein.

Everyone's posting habit is different and everyones thinking capacity is different. Many times people want to express themselves but they fail due miscellaneous insufficiency in them. Have you considered that thought while reframing the merit system? The forum is full of multinational crowd and people are coming from the Non English background too. This takes them to the back foot and thus adds up even more challenges while getting the merits. Local boards merit is unaccounted and they are mostly seen as merit farming.

I completely disagree with your views on the merit system and would think about the whole system as common mans perspective.

You are talking like that everyone here is like you and it would be easy to earn merits in so called 32 days, 9 hours, 14 minutes, 51 seconds to go from zero to Hero.

There is no meaning to your theory and it is just coming out of thrilled journey of yours and nothing else.

That's why this new system is so hype. You have to be a good writer or a very technical support person to get merit and advance.

That means a radical change where only the intelligent will reach legendary.

If signature is disabled or extremely limited (far less character or no background/image color allowed), surely only few people would complain this suggestion But i agree the minimum merit for Hero/Legendary is a too high, considering not everyone can have popularity/attention/good reputation and not everyone give merits depending on writing/info quality, some even give merits to those they know well.

Don’t simply be proud of these titles: Make them signify an achievement to be proud of!

What the fuck is with these fucking people... Dude its a fucking web forum. The rank achieved here is nothing to be proud of...

Holy shit people get a fucking life that isn't tied to this fucking forum... Go outside take a walk enjoy nature, get a fucking blowy (from a real person not some 15 yr old boy pretending to be a 19 yr old women on the webz), smoke a dube, have a glass of wine.

A persons trust, merit, and rank are completely inconsequential because interwebz and also have zero bearing on the content of their posts.

hahahahaha

I agree with a lot about what you said, Flying Hellfish... but you did seem to take this subject matter to almost the opposite extreme in order to make your point... .. ..

Certainly, rank is important in terms of the forum, incentivizing member contributions, and there are certain potential financial and status benefits with rank. You know the expression, "rank has its privileges"?

But, yeah, the overall point that you are making and several other posters in this thread are questioning whether rules should be made around exceptional posters, such as nullius. There is no problem to strive for greatness, but there is also variety in contributions, and some definitely worthy folks are going to get left behind through this new merit system without tweaking.

Additionally, theymos's decision to start the initial merit distribution of all members with merits at the minimum merit level of their current rank will disparately impact members who had been nearly to rank up under the old system, but based on the new system are now faced with earning merits to catch up to where they would have been.

We cannot become oblivious to some of these disparate impacts and the variation of activities and contributions of members who are worthy to rank up but might get locked out of (or left behind from) ranking up because of these new merit terms.

By the way, I have also witnessed some members who seem to engage in a kind of subconscious merit beginning earning a lot of merits, and many of those members are going to rank up much easier than some members who might be more worthy, but less capable (or willing) to engage in self-marketing.

Anyhow, I have also read quite a bit of merit posts suggestions in the recent months, and sure there is also a common constructive theme within suggestions that recognizes that this merit system is in its early days and could take a decent 6 to 12 months to verify how matters are playing out and perhaps an equal amount of time, if not longer to reasonably attempt to fix bugs (if there are possible fixes).

Put BTC here: 1P7K1FyEtD3WQtk4Zd2Dph3qs9gcFGu1pU

How much alt coin diversification is necessary? if you are investing in Bitcoin, then perhaps 0%?

Here is my concrete suggestion for merit thresholds, with proposed changes set in bold. Discussion of my reasoning follows.

___Rank___

Threshold

Newbie

0

Jr. Member

10

Member

30

Full Member

100

Sr. Member

250

Hero Member

1000–1500

Legendary

3000–5000

I have about 230 posts currently and let me tell you that achieving 10 merits by far the hardest thing to achieve with all the help in the mining forums I try and do, believe you me.Like trying to get blood out of a stone.

But I agree on the top end of the rankings as there seems to be a psychological notion to give more merit to people on their rankings than their actual posts. Not bitter in anyway as I approve of the system but just an observation that is very noticeable.

I will concede that it could take longer for a newbie or a jr member to garner attention from other members in order to receive merit, but you should also consider some critical self-reflection, as well.

Look at your post history. You have a lot of one liners and participation in bounty threads, and this seems to be true of your post history both before and after the implementation of the merit system. Quantity of one liner posts does not necessarily equal substantive contribution that motivates other members to want to send merit to you because they are inspired or humored by you in some kind of feeling way... They need to get merit sending inspiration from the content of your posts.

Anyhow, if you are currently having trouble getting 10 merits, and you cannot seem to figure out what you are doing wrong, then you are likely going to have even more difficulties learning how to reach the next couple of merit thresholds of 100 and 250 merits. Of course, if there is some kind of luck that this merit system changes to make earning merits easier for you, then you may benefit from that in order to rank up, but I would not bank on that kind of change happening any time soon.

Put BTC here: 1P7K1FyEtD3WQtk4Zd2Dph3qs9gcFGu1pU

How much alt coin diversification is necessary? if you are investing in Bitcoin, then perhaps 0%?

All these long arguments, that are not interesting given that they have been repeated ad naseum put aside, nullius has one undeniably correct point: The necessity for the merit requirement to reach Jr. Member. It is not uncommon for altcoin campaigns to allow users of these ranks as well. There are huge waves of farmers and bot accounts being enrolled in campaigns[1], and which are therefore spamming the forum.[1] I had someone attempt to enroll ~40 jr. Member accounts in 30 minutes about a week ago.

The point of adding merit was to prevent spammers from achieving higher ranks, and in doing so incentivize higher quality posting. The current requirements achieve this purpose. There is no way your average low quality bounty spammer will be able to pass above member or so now that the initial supply of sMerit has dried up. Remember that merit is only supposed to be an addition to the activity requirement, not the new threshold. I don't know why you act like the activity requirements are so trivial. Hero still requires more than a year and a half of active participation on the forum, Legendary on average almost three. In my opinion meeting both requirements is more than enough to prove yourself a quality member.

Frankly, the limits you are proposing are arbitrarily high. Even you yourself are receiving less than 1 merit per post, and I think you will agree that your posts are on the higher end of the spectrum in terms of merit per post. Suppose your average high quality poster receives .5 merits per post, which is probably still on the higher end. It is absurd to suggest that they should need 6,000+ posts to achieve Legendary status. After a certain point the only determining factor is how many hours you can sit on your ass posting, which in my opinion is not a very good metric for member quality.

When I joined the forums for the first time, i had 1 dream (<>objectives), i want to become a legendary. At that time, I was admiring legendary, it is like a challenge to achieve. While ranking up, i didn't mind joining signature campaign, bitmixer mainly, if you can see my records there, I passed months with less than 25% of max posts per week, money...it is secondary, getting more experience, avoid making mistakes/ being scammed was part of the long path. Finally, after i achieved the required activity for legendary i was waiting my turn, that was the longest waiting time by far, i forgot how long i wait to become member, full, sr then hero member.Now as a legendary, even if i will lose all my activity and all my merit, I will stay a legendary with a big 0, but who cares. Put 10.000 merit points to become legendary or the king of the jungle rank, i don't care, i will stay legendary. So nullius, after this long introduction, I would say we shouldn't prevent people from ranking up at all. It's true, the "demography" has changed, priorities has changed, grab cash is attracting tons of bees, lazy ones mostly... Those one had to acquire the basics of the forums rules and cryptocurrencies, they should learn that shit-posting will not help them progressing. The change should start from the beginning. A jr member will try to find any utility to easily rank up by cheating, begging... 10 smerit isn't that hard to achieve but next, collecting 100 will become way harder especially that most of smerit circulating is hold by sources, same goes to sr members etc...If we want to cut with the spam, we need to impose rules on bounties, they should recruit only member + (i suggest even sr+). The others have necessary to learn and contribute if they want to progress.1 month and a half isn't that much to judge. But if a modification needs to be done, it should start from the introduction of the tail.And this is by far, one of the longest post i made.

The system has only been in place for 44 days and there are hundreds of members that have received more than 44 merits so obviously, that is true.

Yes, and I am one of those people who prove your point. The problem is, and always has been, that good posts are immediately swamped in a tidal wave of bullshit--and the number of garbage posts outnumbers the number of good ones by probably a factor of 10. And excellent posts, such as the ones nullius makes, are rare.

Frankly I don't think people should have given me merits for my posts. They should have given them to someone with a lower rank who needs to rank up, but whatever. It's definitely a lot harder to find a Jr. Member making really good posts than it is a Hero or Legendary member.

There is no need in my opinion to increase the merit requirement.If someone posts bad replies nothing change, they still receive 0 merit.If someone posts good replies they will receive some merits, but some users has problems like local board with few merits givers, low visibility on forum (some people simply skips post from newbie jr member etc), and is really hard for them receive merit even if they post good replies.If someone cheat with merit, nothing change they still abuse the the system.Your idea in my opinion will icrease the abuse of merit cause it becomes more valueable.

I Agree something can change but in a diffent way from what you propouse, my idea is to create a new merit rank based on earned merit but with the activation only after legendary.For example:Newbie 1000 merit earned? still newbie rankHero 1000 merit earned? still Hero rankLegendary 1000 merit earned? new rank

Be proud not of rankBut of your posts and yourselfThen, that is true prideRank is arbitrary. Despite what some people may do by conflating it with reputation, it's arbitrary all the same. The only incentive one has is to create more elaborate signatures, which tend to be rented on the forum.

I acquiesce that because of the financial incentive, this [rank] should be limited. However, that's an issue that campaign managers should take care of: they should punish poor posting quality. And if they allow spam to manifest on the forum, then they themselves should be punished.

I acquiesce that because of the financial incentive, this [rank] should be limited. However, that's an issue that campaign managers should take care of: they should punish poor posting quality. And if they allow spam to manifest on the forum, then they themselves should be punished.

I acquiesce that because of the financial incentive, this [rank] should be limited. However, that's an issue that campaign managers should take care of: they should punish poor posting quality. And if they allow spam to manifest on the forum, then they themselves should be punished.

Managers are mostly responsible for such posting. For example, even yahoo, sylon and other worthy managers wants from their bounty members 20+ posts per week. It's not easy to create 20 worthy posts. I don't mean a posts full of so-called "water" (big post with sense but without purpose and usefull information. About nothing in fact). Of course, if you spend most of your time at forum it will not be a problem. But most of "shitposters" have a real life and they isn't interesting in crypto, forum or other. Bounty managers may decrease needed number of post at first. it will help to reduce the flow of low-informative post (do not confuse with low-quality posts)